History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...

From the early 1900s, these were the very first automatic repeat gadgets for records. The needle would reach the end of a record (give or take a few seconds), then the needle would catch on the repeater and rotate it to the beginning of the record (again, give or take a few seconds)

Friday, December 27, 2013

Between her early acting/dancing roles and before she made TV history as Lily Munster, Yvonne DeCarlo was an aspiring singer.

(If you'll look closer at the record cover and that on the video, you'll see a discrepancy in the conductor name. "John Towner" is actually John Williams. The same guy who brought us the legendary Star Wars soundtracks and future conductor of the Boston Pops....)

A Flash video popped up with "What is Kawaii Crush?" above the player and feeling a bit of relief, I watched my relief turn to horror as apparently, these dolls or whatever are, are supposed to be cute and they have cute crushes on cute kitties, cute pandas, cute birds and cute bunnies and cover their craniums in cute cuddly carcasses of cute critters. They live in a world where everything is cute and everyone has a crush. ("Even on candy!")

Monday, December 23, 2013

Don't expect to connect this to your wi-fi and hear your favourite podcast.

This radio was made in the late 1960s. And it's a standard AM transistor radio. That's all. Radios like this were the iPods of their day and your 20 song playlist came courtesy of your favourite local Top 40 radio station (almost all of them on AM radio in those days.)

And at the time, what we would later call the internet was then called "ARPANET" And strictly for military and government use only. Computers in the 1960s were extremely huge (often taking up an entire large room and hopelessly limited and underpowered - by 1981 standards!) and were rarely seen outside a laboratory. The very few civilian computers never connected to anything.

The Honeywell 316 was the world's first consumer marketed computer (1969). It was essentially a $10,600 recipe box and pencil. Exactly the thing you want to give someone who allegedly can't cook very well. It had no online connectivity.

That's not to say people weren't dreaming. Note the "flat screen monitors".

While it's almost spooky to consider someone could use a word that would be so ubiquitous 30 years before it's general use, I think "Internet" just sounded like a fancy hi-tech name for a cheap UK electronics brand at the time this radio was made. (I'd have a hard time with the "time traveler" theory.)

Why? Well, New York City doesn't have many fireplaces. People mostly live in apartments. So the producers at WPIX-TV thought this would be a nice way to give the illusion of being around a big fireplace without all the fire safety issues of living in a typical New York City apartment building.

It was originally filmed in Gracie Mansion, the home of the mayor of New York. It was originally a 17 second video loop that on repeat, you can see the edit point (the flames suddenly flickered awkwardly.) However the producers removed a fire grate so that the fire could be seen better and a stray spark damaged a nearby antique rug valued at $4,000.

When this loop wore out in 1970, the producers went back to the station film archive to find the master reel. And they couldn't find it! They requested a retake at Gracie Mansion. But the producers were denied. After the rug incident, the mayor's office wanted no more filming of the fireplace at Gracie Mansion.

So the producers searched until they found a similar fireplace - in California!

The 1970 shot was over six minutes in length (and no rugs were destroyed during this filming.)

In the 1980s, commercial VHS video tapes were made of fireplaces similar to the WPIX Yule Log - a testament to the program's influence well beyond the New York City area.

This program also featured a stereo simulcast of the music on WPIX-FM until 1986.

However in 1989, it was announced The Yule Log would no longer be broadcast on WPIX-TV. Being commercial free, it wasn't making money and the new station manager wasn't having any of that. And for 10 heartless years, New York City TV viewers pleaded with WPIX management to no avail. The Yule Log wasn't seen on WPIX.

In 2000, a web site was created to petition WPIX to bring back The Yule Log. But it was December 2001 (after the 9/11 attacks) when WPIX gave in and The Yule Log returned. Where it's still the most watched program in New York City on Christmas.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

That's right, Motown.
In the 1970s, Motown. The legendary home of snazzy R&B pop diversified a bit, starting Melodyland (which changed to Hitsville Records) for country music.

This wouldn't be Motown's last foray into country. In fact, Motown saw it's biggest country hits with Lionel Richie a decade later in the 1980s ("Stuck On You" and "Deep River Woman" w/ Alabama)

Pat Boone (yes, THAT Pat Boone) recorded some country albums for Melodyland/Hitsville. TG Sheppard recorded his first albums for them. And they signed Ronnie Dove. Who has been around as a Baltimore area country/pop artist since the '60s.

You can tell by the year this was released (1976) he was cashing in on the popularity of Red Sovine, who released another country tearjerker involving a little boy called "Teddy Bear" earlier that year that was a huge hit, cracking the pop Top 40 that year.